After a 12-month extension to the MOU, the 50-over tournament WNCL season extended and will play a full home-and-away season for the first time.
Australia’s premier one-day women’s league, WNCL season extended following the signing of a new one-year MOU between Cricket Australia and the players’ union, and will be expanded to include a complete home-and-away season starting next summer.
After two summers substantially impacted by COVID-19, WNCL season extended and a one-year extension based primarily on the previous MOU has been agreed upon to provide both sides with some stability as the .
CA and the Australian Cricketers’ Association both praised the “excellent working relationship” between the two sides today as the agreement maintains the revenue split mechanism that was the focus of a contentious fight during the last round of discussions in 2017.
While adjustments to national contracts have been proposed for future years to ensure that top male players participate in the KFC BBL, only minimal alterations have been implemented for the 2022-23 deal.
The WNCL season extended and they include an extra four games for each team in the Women’s National Cricket League next summer, making it a 12-game home-and-away season.
While the average compensation for female domestic cricketers who participate in the WNCL and WBBL is already around $86,000, this will bring additional match payouts of roughly $7,000 per participant.
“What we’ve agreed upon for the next twelve months gives our female players more opportunity to play and, as a result, better remuneration”
ACA CEO Todd Greenberg
Between 2010 and 2018, the WNCL increased from six games per team to eight games per team starting in the 2019-20 summer, and players have long pushed for the league to be enlarged further. NOt the news of WNCL season extended is a pleasant one.
Border barriers and travel restrictions between states hampered last summer’s season, forcing all clubs to make concessions to secure a full season.
The strength of the WNCL – the world’s first semi-professional women’s domestic 50-over league – was a critical piece in the development of Australian talent, according to Australian great Lisa Sthalekar, speaking after her induction into the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame.
“When you look at T20 cricket and you get a gauge of how many balls the No.5 or No.6 batters face, and how many overs the second-change bowler bowls, that’s not a lot of cricket. The 50-over format – which is basically our Sheffield Shield – it’s the breeding ground and it’s what has made Australian cricket so dominant, because that competition has such fierce contests between all the states. I would love to see a full home-and-away competition come in.”
Lisa Sthalekar on The Scoop podcast
The MOU also calls for participants to provide $4 million to CA to help offset biosecurity costs, which CA CEO Nick Hockley estimated to be around $40 million.
According to the revenue share model, male and female players earn 27.5 percent of the predicted revenue from Australian cricket, with the remaining 27.5 percent going into an adjustment ledger and being paid out at the end of the MOU.
Despite COVID’s issues, CA’s revenues remained above forecast for the current MoU period (2017-2022), according to the release, which did not provide specific data. Now that the WNCL season extended, it should help in some manner.